Mount & Blade Collection

The Mount & Blade: Warband Viking Conquest Reforged Edition is a "monumental update" to last year's DLC release that incorporates a number of new features including "The Last Tuatha De Danann", an all-new story set in the dark, mysterious fantasy realm known as Ireland.

A full breakdown of what's included in the Reforged Edition is up on the TaleWorlds website, with high points including the Hofs of the Nordic Gods, where players can recruit powerful but unpredictable Berserker troops; a faithful canine companion; "Labour mini-games," in which you give up all that raping and the pillaging in favor of an honest day's work in a quarry or on the farm; new quests, events, and items; an Ambush System; and significant changes to multiplayer.

"We are very excited to be releasing Viking Conquest Reforged Edition today as a service to our players and fans!" TaleWorlds said. "Our friends and developers of the DLC, Brytenwalda, have been hard at work over the past few months creating this monumental update."

The Viking Conquest expansion, originally announced in October 2014, adds a single-player campaign to the game featuring, as you might have guessed, Vikings and conquest. I haven't played Mount & Blade: Warband myself, but Phil makes me think that I should: He said in November that while it's not the best-looking game ever, "it's an absolutely brilliant RPG-cum-strategy—filled with a multitude of freeform, sandbox options." The Mount & Blade: Warband Viking Conquest Reforged Edition is out now.

Welcome to our roundup of the best total conversion mods ever. Presented in no particular order, these are the mods that radically transform our favorite games into something different, with new and improved art, gameplay systems, locations, and adventures. Crafted through years of work, sometimes by large teams of volunteer modders, many of these mods have gone on to become PC gaming classics in their own right.

First released way back in 1999, Sven Co-op is still being both updated and played today. A cooperative mod for the original Half-Life, the mod allows groups of players to battle their way through the Half-Life campaign, where they'll find increased challenges and far more enemies, as well as new maps filled with puzzles and challenges. Over the years hundreds of new levels have been added along with new weapons, improved AI, and lots of customization options. Even if you don't own Half-Life, you can play it for free on Steam.

For Game of Thrones fans, this mod is already at the top of your personal list or will be the moment you try it. It transforms CK II’s medieval Europe into the beautifully realised continents of Westeros and Essos and populates them with characters and events straight from the source material. Marry, mingle, or murder your way through the Starks, Lannisters and many other notable dynasties. Best of all, random game events will quickly spin the world into an enjoyable alt-reality of the fiction we’re so familiar with. This is an absolute must-have for gamers who are fans of the George RR Martin novels and the HBO series.

Way back in 1994, this pioneer of full-conversion mods successfully recreated the 1986 sci-fi action film Aliens in Doom. It didn’t settle for just plopping face-huggers and aliens on a map, either: its custom levels mirror familiar locations and story beats from the film and even provide sound effects and voice clips lifted straight from the movie. Hearing Sergeant Apone through your headset reminding you to “Check those corners... check those corners!” not to mention Ripley furiously shouting “COME ON!” when climbing into her signature loader to do battle with the alien queen genuinely made me feel like I was part of the Aliens universe.

You may have heard of it? The multiplayer Half-Life mod featured such team-based missions as hostage rescue and bomb defusal, each team with its own equipment and goals. With its quick rounds and exciting gunplay, Counter-Strike became an instant hit, and the community began creating maps of its own. Counter-Strike’s emphasis on teamwork and communication helped define a new genre of shooters, and the modders behind it were quickly hired by Valve.

Every full-conversion mod comes with a high degree of ambition, but it’s a truly special situation when the mod’s creators have the talent to match. Nehrim: At Fate’s Edge, created by German modding team SureAI over four years, does what the best full conversion mods do: reshapes the features that are lacking in the original game and provide hours of exciting new content. With original voice work by dozens of actors, big changes to several of the game’s familiar systems, and its own quests, story, lore, playable races, and a massive and beautifully designed new map to explore, Nehrim transforms The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion into an entirely new experience.

Plenty of games have a god mode accessible through console commands, but Garry’s Mod takes the idea to an entirely new level. A multiplayer sandbox limited only by your creativity, the mod has proven to be the ultimate tool for creating webcomics, videos and custom game modes, as it enables players to spawn objects and entities and pose them however they like. You can even play Half- Life 2 using all of the mod’s tools, turning Gordon Freeman from a simple gun-toting scientist into the ultimate expression of your will.

Harder, longer, and with hundreds of changes to the base game, Long War extends XCOM's campaign, lets you play with up to 12 squad members at a time, adds new soldier classes, voice packs, weapons and technology, and lots of improved and completely overhauled systems. Long War wasn't just a hit with players but with XCOM's developers, who brought the mod team in to work on launch-day mods for XCOM 2, as well as create Long War 2.

This mod isn’t simply a celebration of the acclaimed Thief series using Doom 3’s engine, but actually an improvement on some of its features, especially the wonderful and engaging new lockpicking system. The open-ended stealth adventure lets you slink through a gorgeous, highly-detailed gothic steampunk world as you fill your pantaloons with loot and try to avoid detection. Most importantly, the mod comes with its own mission editor, enabling members of the community to create and submit their own custom levels and stories. The Dark Mod was released as a standalone game in 2013.

It sounded like an impossible project: building the entirety of the celebrated FPS Half-Life in Half-Life 2’s Source engine, but after eight years of work by a large volunteer team of modders it finally became a reality. While it stops short of recreating the entire game (Gordon Freeman’s leap into Xen is the mod’s endpoint), it’s still a remarkable accomplishment. For Half-Life veterans it contains a mix of new design elements and familiar confrontations, and it’s a also great way to experience the ground-breaking adventure for those turned off by the dated graphics of the original.

In a game featuring starvation, sickness, and swarms of growling zombies, it still falls to other human players to provide most of the horror. While the standalone version of DayZ became a big hit in Early Access, the original open-world multiplayer survival mod is perfectly playable. The vast map and lack of global chat provide a feeling of intense loneliness, but the prospect of actually meeting someone else is a constant threat.

The name is certainly apt: this mod takes the real-time space strategy game and adds an almost absurd amount of complexity to nearly every single aspect. Alongside improvements to the AI, physics and graphics, the mod adds scores of new units and maps, constructible subsystems, deeper tech and research trees, and a diplomacy system. It even adds an actual calendar so gametime can be marked in years as in the Civilization series.

Link:Dota Allstars, a recent iteration of the original mod, worked on by IceFrog, who now works for Valve on Dota 2.

An exciting combination of RTS and RPG, the multiplayer battle arena mod for Warcraft III (based on a modded map from StarCraft) is a lot of things: simple to understand, difficult to master, and most of all, utterly addictive. In its early days DotA was a project that was passed from modder to modder, and like an unending stream of creeps it eventually spread through the gaming world to become a massive hit, as well as the first lanepushing game to have sponsored tournaments.

This team-based multiplayer mod for Half-Life 2 is set in a slick, futuristic cyberpunk city and features three different classes to choose from, each with their own distinct weapons and strengths. With lethally realistic gunfire and cloaking abilities available to some classes, NeoTokyo requires more stealthy and tactical play than many online shooters demand. Inspired by anime classics Ghost in the Shell and Akira, NeoTokyo also features an amazing and engrossing custom soundtrack that you’ll want to listen to even when you’re not playing the game. The mod was released as a standalone title in 2009.

Combining FPS action and simulation, this large scale multiplayer-only mod brings wonderfully realised Battletech mechs to life in Cryengine 2, though it began as a mod for Quake Wars. Tanks, jets, mechs and hovercraft strategically battle for territorial control in beautiful, varied, highlydetailed outdoor environments with full day/night cycles. The mod was so impressively made it was even sanctioned by Microsoft, who own the Mechwarrior franchise the mod is based on.

While it’s a standalone release now, Cry of Fear began as a Half-Life mod. It’s the story of a man who wakes after being hit by a car to discover his city is filled with gruesome monsters and his mind packed with psychological horrors. The mod has some interesting and immersive tweaks, such as an extremely limited inventory—and the fact that the game doesn’t pause while using it—that bring new challenges as you play through a disturbing, winding story with original animated sequences and multiple endings.

The Sengoku period in Japan was a time of turmoil, political intrigue and near-constant warfare. What better time and place for a massive, openworld combat RPG built on the capable framework of Mount & Blade? The mod features actual clans and figures from Japanese history, new skins and armour types, new gunpowder weapons, and dozens of historically accurate locations spread across a map of Japan with twice the playable area of the original game. It also incorporates a number of other excellent M&B mods such as Diplomacy and Freelancer, which add even more great features.

You’re put in control of a clerk who suddenly finds himself completely alone at the office, but you’ll soon start to reconsider just how much control you actually have. While difficult to describe, the mod quickly proves to be a witty and insightful commentary on videogames, particularly the act of making choices. It’s also wonderfully narrated by a voice so soothing you’d like him to read you bedtime stories – if only you could trust him. It’s now a complete game with a lot more polish and an extended story, but the original mod remains a thoughtful, oddball delight.

Every kid who ever picked up JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings novels has longed to step into Middle-earth, and one of the best ways to do it is with this mod for the turn-based strategy game Total War, capable as it is of portraying epic-scale battles. Third Age features over a hundred accurate locations and a dozen factions straight from the fiction. It includes custom units such as ents, trolls, giant spiders and wargs, and lets you play not just as heroes like the men of Gondor and the Silvan Elves, but also as the evil forces of Sauron’s Mordor, Isengard, and even the orcs of the Misty Mountains.

As Donovan Ling, a lone cop investigating a garbled transmission from the industrial town of Grinwood, you quickly find yourself alone and fighting to survive a relentless zombie invasion. This mod is packed with astounding visuals of a city gone to hell, and a chilling original soundtrack accompanies you as you battle your way through more than 20 harrowing and atmospheric maps. Despite an arsenal of deadly weapons and melee attacks, you’ll never really have time to catch your breath.

With one team playing marines and the other playing aliens, Natural Selection converts Half-Life into a multiplayer hybrid of first-person shooting and realtime strategy. It brought to life the concept of a commander in an FPS: a sole player who views the map in top-down fashion, giving orders, issuing supply drops, and managing the map in a traditional RTS fashion. The aliens have no overlord or shared resources, so must rely on communication if they want to win. Despite big differences in the two teams’ abilities and tactics, the mod remains a tightly balanced experience.

Long before it evolved into a cartoony hat-trading simulation, Team Fortress was a mod for Quake. It originally featured five classes, later blossoming into the full iconic nine we’re familiar with today, and even provided a tenth class, the civilian, playable during VIP escort missions. Instead of just red and blue teams, certain maps for TF included two additional teams, green and yellow, struggling for map control and engaging in capture the flag games. The mod’s popularity led to a proper release and, much later, the Team Fortress 2 we know today, although the original mod is still played on a few servers.

With a hundred new skins, sixty maps, custom cinematic sequences,and two storylines providing a hefty thirty hours of playtime, The Nameless Mod grew, over seven years of development, from something of an in-joke to a true mod masterpiece and Deus Ex fan favourite. Part homage and part satire, the mod sports thousands of lines of custom dialogue, tons of tweaks, and dozens of great new music tracks, not to mention books, newspapers and emails.

Mount & Blade Warband is not a beautiful game. Its graphicsability is low. It is, to borrow from the teachings of Daphne & Celeste, without an alibi. On the plus side, it can run on pretty much any recent system without dropping to a single-digit FPS, or refusing to load faces. So, you know, there's that.

Nope, don't worry, you haven't slipped back through a time portal to four years ago. Or, at least, if you have, it isn't because of this news. The 2010 strategy RPG Mount & Blade: Warband is getting another DLC expansion. Viking Conquest is set around Britain, Norway and Denmark, and features a single-player storyline, the traditional sandbox mode and new multiplayer game types.

If you're worried that this will further extend the agonising wait until the release of Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlords, rest easy. The DLC is being tackled by the makers of M&B: Warband's superb Brytenwalda mod—leaving TaleWorlds to continue working away at the sequel.

The expansion will be releasing into early access "soon". There's little in the way of additional details, but you can see some seafaring screenshots below.

Mount and Blade 2 was announced way back in 2012, and since then developers TaleWorlds have been quieter than a medieval village hoping to escape the attention of a meddling local lord. We've had a few screenshots and devblogs since then, but here's some lovely video of the RPG/strategy/medieval battling game, showing the environments and powerful editing tools, and abusing the instrument known as the pan pipe.

Now that is one impressive editor, letting players adjust the terrain, weather, textures and scripting when creating their own environments for mods. I can see why Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlords is taking TaleWorlds so long: technically, they seem to have come on leaps and bounds since With Fire and Sword, their last Mount and Blade game.

A previous devblog explored Bannerlords' factions, revealing that they're "now divided into clans, who have their own priorities and rivalries. Lords' personalities have more variety. One new feature that we hope will add a lot of color is minor factions: outlaws and mercenaries based on historical or legendary bands like the Jomsvikings or the Fianna of Ireland. But the outer kingdoms the ones whom imperial citizens would call 'barbarians' should still retain that sandbox feel".

Back in May, TaleWorlds detailed their new facial animation system, which you can read about here.

Hold position troops! Before you go charging towards Mount and Blade: Warband's Steam page, at least finish this paragraph. The mostly excellent, somewhat rough-around-the-edges RPG is now free to try until Sunday, 1pm PDT. And for those intent on conquering its brand of questing, troop-management and tactical battling, the game is 75% off until Monday.

In addition, the game now offers Steam Workshop support hopefully meaning its wealth of great mods will soon be available for easier install. It's still early days, though, so for now we'll have to settle for ponies.

Warband is arguably the best of the Mount & Blade series so far. It's much improved over the original game, and also purer and less problematic than the With Fire and Sword semi-sequel. If you've not tried the series before, this really is the best place to jump on board.

After a good start yesterday, day two of Steam s dozen-day Summer Sale isn t necessarily obliterating our minds with savings, but there s still some great values available today or through shorter-term flash sales. Within, find our picks for the best current deals on Steam. Don t forget that GOG is having a summer sale of its own, too.

Reminder: if a game isn't a daily deal or a flash sale, it could pop up later in the sale for an even lower price. If you want to be safe, wait until June 30 to pick up a sale-long deal.

5 - Ikaruga50% off: $4.99 / 3.49 Steam store page | Note: May be reduced further in a Flash sale50% may not be a huge discount, but one of the best SHMUPS of all time is worth every penny. Unlike most bullet hell shooters, Ikaruga's polarity-switching gameplay gives you the power to absorb some bullets while dodging others. At first, switching from white to black and back to stay alive just seems cool. Once you discover how the polarity system plays into scoring, you realize how deep and intimidating and brilliant it really is. Ikaruga's developer Treasure has been mostly dormant for the past few years, and this is their first-ever port to the PC. Back in January, the developer said it was mulling a new game for Steam. The more successful Ikaruga is on PC, the more likely that is to happen.

4 - Amnesia Collection80% off: $6.99 / 4.79 - Steam store pageThe Dark Descent and A Machine for Pigs, conveniently bundled into one cheap night terror. We loved both of them. Unlike horror games which arm you with evil-defeating ghost bullets, Amnesia is about being hunted: running, hiding, being disgustingly terrified by a sound effect. What Amnesia gets more than other survival horror games is that the things you can imagine are far more horrifying than anything it can show you on the screen. Even so, it ll show you some damn nasty stuff.

2 - The Walking Dead: Season 250% off: $12.49 / 9.49 - Steam store pagePutting players into Clementine's tiny shoes in season two of The Walking Dead was a gamble. In the first season, Lee was a grown-up, with the strength to fight walkers and the authority to make big decisions. How would that translate to playing a young girl? While episode one was a step down in quality, episode two was one of the best episodes Telltale has ever created. It proved that players can still make tough decisions as Clementine, and the season has mostly made her a believable protagonist. She can seem a little too grown up now and then, but the season is both gripping and heartbreaking so far. $2.50 per episode is a fantastic price.

1 - Mount & Blade Collection80% off: $6.99 / 4.99 - Steam store page | Flash sale: Buy it before 8 p.m. ESTIt won t make your GPU sweat, but Taleworlds medieval sandbox action-RPG is one of our favorite open-ended experiences on PC. M&B s go anywhere, pillage anything approach to the genre is unlike anything else: a dynamic world populated by dozens of lords and dukes serving multiple factions, each roaming the same massive medieval landscape as you. Steal from farmers. Get married. Siege a castle. The combat is clumsy at times, but we love loosing arrows packs of bandits. Warband is what you should play, but this collection is a ticket to the ridiculous Star Wars Conquest mod for the original Mount & Blade.

Other great deals todayRemember that games not categorized as Daily Deals or Flash Sales may be reduced further.

Years in the making, Warsword Conquest is finally playable in beta: a full conversion mod for Mount and Blade: Warband that transforms the game into a world based on Warhammer fantasy. There are thirteen different factions to join, including the rat-like Skaven, the scaly Lizardmen, Chaos, pirates, and of course, dwarves, elves, and orcs. But screw all of those, because you can play as a skeleton. Don't you want to play as a skeleton? I'm gonna play as a skeleton.

Yep, you can even customize your skullface (a bit).

With so many factions and races from Warhammer Fantasy in the mod, I'd rather not pledge my allegiance to a single one and miss out on seeing most of the others. I decide to play as a freelance skeleton, lending my services here and there but not getting too attached to anyone in particular. I begin by joining up with the goblins of The Badlands. They're so short that when I speak to them their heads are barely visible in the conversation window. However, they're happy to hire an inexperienced skeleton (named Murray, of course) into their ranks. It's awesome to run into battle alongside trolls and spider-riding goblins, and we make a mess out of several groups of dwarves we run into.

Spiders, trolls, and dwarves oh my (lord it's a huge bloody mess)

I eventually decide to retire from the goblin army (my commander is very understanding) and visit my homeland, the Tomb Kings Empire. High King Settra is happy to employ me, and while I'm not at all xenophobic, it is rather nice to be surrounded by my fellow undead, and particularly nice to be given armor and weapons suitable for my flesh-free body (the goblin gear didn't work for my bony bod). Also cool: when we go to battle, our cavalry rides skeletal horses and giant undead snakes.

The creaking of bones is like music to my ears. Well, ear-holes.

As much as I love going to war alongside my skeletal brethren, I eventually decide to move on (once I can afford my own necroserpent to ride), so I recruit a small force of skeletons from the local taverns (why do skeletons hang out in taverns?) and we move through the Pirate Kingdom and head into elf country. Along the way I stop in various towns and taverns, and soon I've got a motley crew of followers, including a couple of swabbies, a half-dozen men from the Alcatani Fellowship, and even a few Skaven slaves.

My posse is gettin' weird, and that's just how I like it.

Of course, no matter how much progress you make in a Mount & Blade game, it can all be suddenly and horribly lost, such as when my weirdly fearsome crew runs into something just plain fearsome: some Norse raiders. It's not that a bunch of bearded jerks are so imposing, it's just that this crew has some hired ogres on their side, and the massive, hammer-wielding merc-monsters wade through my ranks, clubbing us all into bonemeal. I didn't even know you could hire ogres. I'm definitely going to need to hire some ogres.

Oh, elves. You're just all so... grand.

I need cash to hire a new crew, so I throw in with an Elven army for a bit. Normally, I find elves a bit snooty, but I have to admit, charging into battle alongside them, with their gleaming armor and white horses and colorful banners... okay, I get why elves are so revered. Also, props to them for letting a skeleton join them, no questions asked. Not a lot of elves would do that.

Eventually, I make enough cash to head out on my own again. I meet a skeleton lord (in a pub, of course), I hire a small collection of Lizardmen, and while I can't find any ogres to fight for me, I do find some Gorols, who are so tall that when I speak to one, only his crotch appears in the dialogue pane. They're not ogres, but hopefully they'll pack a wallop, and I'm happy to once again be in charge of a crew of violent misfit monsters.

Gorillas and lizards! Hopefully the opposing army will be too confused to fight back.

By now I've worked my way through the Skaven Kingdom and I'm as far north as I can go, in Dark Elf country. I've added a Waywatcher to my crew, along with some merc leadbelchers (ogres at last!) and a few Dark Elf recruits. We win battles, capture prisoners, and sell enough of them to buy a boat. We even chase down some undead pirates, but considering Murray was an undead pirate in another life, I feel like I should let them go.

Irony.

Eventually, we make our way to the Realm of Chaos, which is actually pretty organized, what with the castles and towns and hierarchies and people unwilling let some skeleton marry their daughter without knowing him better. At least they dress interestingly!

I'm a skeleton so I show a lot of crack, too. But that's a lot of crack.

It's been a long journey and Murray is ready for some steady work, and the Chaos Realm is as good a place as any. I join the Chaos army, though they force me to wear their armor, which sort of takes away my skeleton-ness. Still, a job is a job.

I appreciate the flesh and muscle, but I've been doing okay with just the bones.

When I last left Murray, he was gaining influence in the Realm of Chaos, he'd bought and opened a mill, and was hoping to woo and marry Chaos Lady Timethi. Hey, every swinging bachelor skeleton has got to settle down someday.

Installation: Warsword Conquest is still in beta, so look for future updates. It can be downloaded here along with a hotfix, and all you need to do is locate your Warband folder, and extract the files into the Modules folder. Extract the hotfix on top of those files, and then activate the module when you begin playing Warband. It's also on moddb.